I'm a therapist, and I'm also an ACT practitioner. You're on the money here, though I'd encourage you to think even bigger. To use your example about travel: extend it further. In ACT, goals and values couldn't be more different, and we spend a lot of time helping patients distinguish between the two. "Traveling" is a goal - the value would be found in "why travel?", what does it get you?

If the answer to that is then something like "it gets me a sense of adventure", then the "value" (as defined in ACT, anyway) might be just that: you want to live adventurously, and traveling is a "goal" that you believe, at least for now, can bring you a little bit of that. In fact, one of my favorite ACT exercises is finding adverbs that fit these ideas, because adverbs cannot be "attained" like goals can. That's the whole problem with goals, in fact, that leads indirectly to a lot of pain: goals can be attained.

ACT is lovely, but I'm biased. If you have any questions please ask!

To both of you who replied: yes, I absolutely use these things in my own life. Before I say some of mine, it's important to allow these things to be mutable -- the "values" you, um, value, can change over the course of your life and that's okay. The best ones probably won't -- maybe you'll just shift in emphasis or priority -- but by really chewing on this topic regularly, it's possible to arrive at values that really truly speak to who you are at your deepest.

The point isn't the adverbs themselves; that's just a way of getting to what matters most to you. So the exercise is something like "fill in the blank: I want to live ____ly."

In my case, ones I "discovered" in myself fairly early were "candidly" and "compassionately" (or kindly - they're not exactly the same, I know, but for me they map onto very similar things). So in other words, two of my values, as ACT defines them, are candor and compassion.

The effect is great, because there's no goal-pressure or even goal-attainment. There's no day that'll come in which I'll "be candid"; instead, I'm free to "derive" goals from that value, e.g. "how can I work some candor into _____ thing I'm doing today?". This conversation with my siblings; this project at work; me sitting down to do my taxes. It's weird sometimes, and you can either dismiss it or use it as a kind of creative prompt: "at first glance, my values don't really apply to this activity, but what's a way to work them in?"

I can say more but I don't want to ramble.

Thanks for your comments. I hope you keep posting here on HN, if you don’t already. There don’t seem to be many people on this board in your profession, and you write about the topics in a way that is clear and makes sense in the context of this community.

I responded below to another commenter, not on your behalf of course. I hope I didn’t misrepresent your point. Thanks for posting.

I haven't looked again at this thread until now (I hadn't noticed the little karma ticker in my HN account go up), so apologies for missing this.

I've just seen your comment below and it's great to see that people in this community are curious about these ideas and mental health more broadly. I don't think you misrepresented my point at all; in fact you engaged with it in a way I hadn't considered before. I think it's essential to remind ourselves just how freakin' young psychology, psychiatry, "mental health", and all within these things (especially ACT) really are. I don't think the public really knows how little we know as a profession, and how much many of the most touted interventions are, from researchers' points of view, really just modest attempts at making a positive impact. The public certainly aren't aware of the possible negative consequences of mental health treatments, including psychotherapy. And I'm sad to say many of my colleagues don't think a lot about this potential for _iatrogenesis_ , as it's known, either. All of which is to say that the more that intelligent people, like yourselves here on HN, engage critically with mental health, the better.

I'll gladly continue posting here, and I thank you for the encouragement. It doesn't seem like HN has direct messages, sadly, otherwise I'd happily offer you or anyone else to reach out in private any time.

I'm trying to run through this exercise right now. Is it bad to have too many adverbs at one time? Whatabout adverbs that might contradict? Or is it fine to just get a few, no matter the contradictions and not overthink it?

Hello helical,

The version of the exercise I gave was extremely abbreviated - it's a web forum, after all! - so it's necessarily stripped of a lot of detail and context. In a real engagement with a patient, I'd have addressed questions like yours right out of the gate. So apologies. (I hope you see this!).

The short answer to all of them is: it's just fine! The purpose here isn't to get a highly formal, systematic, rigid "code of action" that you live by strictly like some kind of Roman philosopher (though that stuff is incredibly interesting, and ACT has debts to much of it). Instead, the purpose of the values thing is to assist in being able to respond flexibly to pain and suffering while committing to some of the things you find most meaningful - things that are larger than yourself that you can serve.

Is it bad to have too many adverbs? Heavens, no. This is an iterative process, so if the first thing that comes out of your head is a tsunami of possible values, that's terrific. What I might recommend next is to quickly rank-order them based on a simple gut feeling of which ones really interest you right now, these days.

Contradictory adverbs: I don't want to sound glib, but I'll say it anyway: you're human! Of course you'll have contradictory values. That's okay. Since the entire point of ACT is to "act" (heh) in the world, to live these values in some way, however modestly, the contradictions don't necessarily matter so much if, in picking one in one instance and trying to act on it somehow, you walk away from the situation with a feeling of "I'm uncomfortable because this clashes a bit with other things I find important, but I know that I didn't act purposelessly back there" - if that makes any sense.

So basically your suspicions in your last question are correct: just get a few, don't overthink it, go out there and try to live them or instantiate them in some way (doesn't matter how small!), and then return to reflect on how that went. It might be that, in acting on some value, you find that actually you don't believe in it that deeply, or it's not really truly you, or whatever, and you can drop it and try the next one out. Like I said, this is an iterative, lifelong process, and it's mutable and it'll change and grow and go in different, surprising directions. The point isn't to do this exercise once -- it's to begin doing it on and off for the rest of your life, in the same way that a navigator keeps looking up at the night sky and keeping an eye on Polaris every now and then.

I hope this was somewhat helpful to you. I'll keep an eye on this thread if you have any more questions.

That sounds really fascinating! Could you give more examples of those adverbs, or ACT in general?

Do you apply it in your own life, and if so, how? (If you don’t mind sharing!)

Thank you so much for the clarification between goals and values!! AND for the work you do! Finding a therapist who practices ACT changed my life.

Can you give an example of the adverb thing?

Not OP. One may may have the desire to think of oneself as one who lives adventurously [adverb modifying the verb lives]. Yet this same person may find some of the roles, activities, or trappings of actual adventuring; that is, the things one does to be considered adventurous by oneself and/or by others; to be not actually be enjoyable or tolerable to themselves, which creates tension within an individual, which could easily lead to self-blame.

This is my interpretation of why this concept may be a useful aid to help one step outside their own perspective, and possibly help reveal unconscious desires, motivations, fears, and more.

Thanks that's really interesting.